David A. Matthews BSc, MSc, PhD

Professor David Matthews is primarily interested in virus-host cell interactions with an emphasis on respiratory viruses, in particular adenovirus, but also coronaviruses, respiratory syncytial virus, influenza, and Hendra virus. Matthews has been looking at how these viruses interact with the host cell using state-of-the-art techniques including laser confocal microscopy, high throughput quantitative mass spectrometry, and Deep Sequencing (or Next Generation Sequencing) of virus-infected cells. In collaboration with Dr. Davidson here at Bristol, we also apply these techniques to the study of the Dengue virus.

Most recently we have become very interested in the study of novel zoonotic agents such as SARS-Cov-2, Hendra, MERS, and Ebola. We are at the forefront of developing novel integrated high throughput methods to study these very dangerous viruses in their natural hosts (bats) to try to understand why they are apparently harmless to their natural host but highly lethal in humans.

In addition, we also use these high throughput approaches to study recombinant gene therapy systems (especially adenovirus-based ones). This includes an emphasis on the molecular basis of oncolytic or cancer-killing adenoviruses.